Campers pitched tents on the baseball field of Oceana High School Thursday to bring awareness to their cause — American Sign Language.

The Walk for ASL, a 30-day walk from San Francisco to Santa Monica that began last Wednesday, was organized by a nonprofit organization, Facundo Element, based out of Boulder, Colorado.

The 15 walkers camped for the first night at the San Francisco Zoo and the second at Oceana High School. Each day of the journey walkers are expected to make progress all along our Highway One, Pacific Coast Highway by the time they get to Santa Monica. When they left Oceana on Friday, they headed toward their next overnight spot in Half Moon Bay.

On their journey, they hope to bring attention to the transformative power of American Sign Language and international sign languages.

A few examples of the contributions, per the organization’s website, include

• Increased visual-spacial and peripheral skills

• Closer relationships, fostering of community-building

• Deaf space design principles promote development of architecture that proves to be beneficial to society at large

• Utilizes and stimulates more areas of the brain than if one were to just use spoken language

• Promotes earlier language development in children and reduces socio-emotional barriers resulting from language oppression

While they were having dinner Thursday evening at their camp, they warmly greeted this reporter and took the time to answer questions written in a notepad. I had never conducted an interview when it was impossible to simply yell out to someone to get his attention, instead of waiting and walking to catch up to him after he had walked away. I had to carefully write questions instead of relying on my usual scrawl, which they couldn’t read. I was struck by how much those of us who can hear take for granted. Meeting them slowed me way down. The pleasure of their company was well worth it. The two walk coordinators, Alison Aubrecht and Ryan Commerson, a little sunburned and dehydrated with foot blisters from the 7.5 walk from the zoo that day and the 10 miles the day before, spent their day asking their fellow walkers what it meant to be deaf. Commerson is creating a video of their journey.

“We aren’t teaching, we’re philosophizing,” Commerson wrote, “We believe that sign language has the transformative power to connect people. We talk about the constant persecution of ASL. There is a multi-billion dollar effort to eradicate sign language and the people who use it.”

Aubrecht said there’s been a bit of trial and error, but basically their trip is going very well.

“It’s been fun talking with people along the way. We have had people approach us to try and learn American Sign Language,” she wrote.

When asked what she wanted Pacificans to know about her cause, she replied, “That deaf people have a very real contribution to diversity and are a linguistic minority. It’s important to ensure we all create space for self-representation.”

Other participants noted their reasons for participating in the walk on the Facundo Element website.

Heidi Zimmer wrote, “I am walking for ASL because celebrating what makes ASL unique in art, heritage, literature, theatre, history, education, heroes, and most importantly our own point of view. Walk for ASL is a RICH adventure!”

“I am walking for ASL because I earnestly want the hearing Americans to recognize our basic everyday language known as ASL (American Sign Language). We are comfortable with our language and we want the Americans to accept our language as official,” wrote Bob Walker.

“I am walking for ASL for the beauty of it, the immersion experience to play in my second language daily with some of the finest deaf minds in the nation for a month, the love and need of ASL in my own life and the lives of many and because I cherish my right to be a deaf woman who embraces and celebrates ASL,” wrote Julia Cameron Damon.

Pauline Spanbauer wrote, “I am walking for the preservation and recognition of our ASL because I want to show the world that I am proud of my language where only my parents and grandparents gave it to me. How precious is our deaf culture heritage knowing the beauty of sign language that everyone can enjoy.”

Butch Zein wrote, “I walk for ASL because we have a story to tell about a neo-eugenic system’s 130-year attempt to eradicate Deaf people, our language and our culture. It is time to give ASL the same recognition and respect as is given to other ethnic minorities with their own languages and cultures.”

The Walk for ASL event is also a fundraiser. Each walker raised at least $1000 to participate. The group raised $29,000, just enough to pay for the walk itself and set $3,000 aside for a research grant focusing on the benefits of American Sign Language, established by the Dea$ood Foundation. The walkers are hoping to raise additional funds for Project Humanity, a full-feature film produced by Facundo Element.

WASHINGTON – Hillary Clinton challenged Congress on Thursday to combat fake and misleading news on social media, using a post-election appearance to tackle an issue that gripped her presidential campaign and culminated with a shooting incident Sunday in Northwest Washington.